The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, September 5, 2014

There is no horror more appalling
than forcing the Gazan population to endure the stockpiling of rockets
in mosques, the construction of tunnels under their kitchens, the
situating of terrorist headquarters under their hospitals and the
perverted use made of UNRWA facilities (some of whose personnel
collaborated with Hamas and willingly concealed weapons). The West must
disband UNRWA.The tragedy is that the Gazans, in fear of their lives from Hamas terrorists, are afraid to protest.Hama leaders should be tried for war crimes, and Abbas should
remember that since he heads the national consensus government with
Hamas, he himself is liable to be tried in the Hague for the war crimes
Hamas has committed against the Israelis.Why is the Oslo II Agreement of 1995, assuring the complete
disarmament of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, even being
renegotiated, and why was it not implemented in the first place?As Qatar is a country without a people and the Palestinians are a
people without a country, Qatar should be turned into the national home
for the Palestinians, "Palestine."

Hamas violates Islam by fighting and indiscriminately killing Jewish
women, children and the aged, while its missiles launched at Jerusalem
could easily harm Arabs and Christians, and hit Al-Aqsa mosque and the
Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

The claim voiced by Muhammad Deif and Ahmed al-Jaabari, leaders of
Hamas's military-terrorist wing, that all Jews in Palestine will die,
sounds suspiciously like the precursor to the campaign waged by the
Islamic State [IS] against the Christians, the Yazidis and the Shi'ites
in Syria and Iraq -- and it contradicts Islam.

Even before Hamas launched their missiles at Israel and activated
their terrorist tunnels, its leaders sent their suicide bombers from the
West Bank to kill Jews deep inside Israeli territory. To prevent
suicide bombing attacks and protect its population, a decade ago the
Israelis constructed the security fence, separating the Palestinian
Authority from Israel.

The leaders of the Palestinian terrorist organizations, especially
Hamas, frustrated in their attempts to commit murder, tried to overcome
the obstacle by enlisting supporters of the Palestinian cause to call it
a racist "apartheid wall", and to accuse Israel of the "crime" of
apartheid for wanting to prevent murderers from infiltrating into its
territory. Despite the accusations and the traditional Friday riots
"protesting" the barrier, there is not a single Arab in the Israeli-Arab
city of Umm el-Fahm who would agree to move (with his house, property
and lands) from Israel to the Palestinian Authority, or to any other
Arab regime.

During the recent Operation Protective Edge, the Jews did everything
possible to keep from killing Gazans. They dropped flyers from planes,
made telephone calls and sent SMS messages warning the Gazans to leave
potential combat zones. There is no basis in fact for the accusation
that Israel killed Gazans in cold blood. If the Israelis had wanted to
kill all the residents of the Gaza Strip, they had sufficient ammunition
to do it easily. Had Hamas, however, possessed the same firepower, it
would, without a doubt, have long since slaughtered every single Israeli
Jew.

While Hamas recklessly sent its rockets without warning to Israel's
population centers, the Israeli army surgically attacked Hamas rocket
and mortar shell launchers and blew up its terrorist tunnels. Watching
TV, we often saw how Israel aborted missions when it became apparent
that civilians were in the area of a proposed attack. Hamas, on the
other hand, launched its missiles from deep within the civilian
population without warning, knowingly exposing local Gazans to Israeli
retaliation.

The problem is that Hamas, driven, claim its leaders, by orders from
Allah and the Prophet, have a distorted view of Islam which, along with
other radical Islamist movements, they market to the world as the Islam
of terrorism, violence and carnage, and not as the religion of peace.
There is no horror more appalling than forcing the Gazan population to
endure the stockpiling of rockets in mosques, the construction of
tunnels under their kitchens, the situating of terrorist headquarters
under hospitals and the perverted use made of UNRWA facilities (some of
whose personnel collaborated with Hamas and willingly concealed
weapons).

The tragedy is that Gazans, in fear of their lives from Hamas
terrorists, are afraid to protest. No sane person can identify with the
acts perpetrated by Hamas. Naturally, it is hard to justify the killing
of Palestinians by Jews, but as the Arab saying goes, "Let a thousand
mothers cry, just not mine," and that makes it possible to understand
the claim of the Jews that they have to kill us to save themselves.

Nevertheless, it is strange that the Palestinians in the "democratic"
Islamic Gaza Strip have not yet uttered one word against Hamas. Even
the correspondents who documented the use made by Hamas of UNRWA
facilities for firing rockets at Israel only dared to write their
reports after they had left the Gaza Strip. Hamas exploited their fear
and made them report lies about the deaths of "civilians" who were
really terrorist operatives. So great was the journalists' fear of
expulsion or reprisal that they complied.

Hamas made the mistake of thinking the Jews would invade the Gaza
Strip and that their operatives would rise up from the tunnels deep
within Gaza and strike and kill their soldiers. The Jews were smarter,
however, and made do with a partial invasion to expose and destroy the
tunnels. The Israeli army exploited its relative advantages and attacked
from the air and sea, and sent in tanks, to assist special units of its
infantry, while the Palestinians claimed it was an army of cowards, a
stupid claim but actually believed by some Gazans.

One of Hamas's worst crimes was its use of the mosques, the houses of
Allah, for military-terrorist purposes. Because Hamas not only had
tunnel openings inside mosques, but also used them as weapons caches,
and fired missiles from their courtyards, the Jews bombed them without
hesitation. Actually, the Jews had a good teacher: our Prophet Muhammad
(SAAS) himself burned the mosque in Al-Madinah where his opponents had
barricaded themselves.[1]
Unhappily, bombing religious sites is not unusual in the Middle East or
in the world. The Islamic State [IS], the Taliban and various other
fanatical groups all attack ancient and modern Christian, Jewish,
Buddhist and Muslim houses of worship, and in Syria and Iraq the
Shi'ites and Sunnis attack each others' mosques. IS, not far removed in
ideology and practice from Hamas, is currently slaughtering Yazidis,
Christians and Shi'ites in Iraq, kidnapping and raping their women and
selling them into slavery, all the while calling on the "infidels" to
convert to Islam or die.

The claim that Palestinian blood was shed as a means to kill Jews and
liberate Al-Aqsa is simply evil. Palestinian blood was shed because
Hamas rejected Netanyahu's appeals for ceasefires, despite the Islamic
history that on several occasions Muhammad said one drop of Muslim blood
was more precious that the Kaaba itself. According to one of the
hadiths, "Allah would consider it less important for the Kaaba to be
destroyed stone after stone than for a single drop of Muslim blood to be
shed."

Hamas is wasteful of Palestinian blood. However, like Muhammad
(SAAS), who used catapults to sling stones into the city of Taif, Hamas
sends its rockets to attack the cities of Israel. What Hamas did not
take into account was that Muhammad never went to war without being
fully prepared for every eventuality; he collected intelligence and made
sure he would win. Hamas was defeated; the Palestinians lost in the
struggle against Israel and failed miserably.

It cannot be denied that Hamas is not only a terrorist organization
but committed a double-pronged war crime: on the one hand, it
deliberately caused the deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians by
using them as human shields for its operatives, its rockets, its mortar
shells and its tunnels, and on the other hand, it attacked population
centers in Israel to kill innocent civilians. And now it makes the
absurd boast that its civilians were killed but that its operatives are
all still alive, and it boasts of having killed more than 60 Israeli
soldiers who entered the Gaza Strip.

To my great sorrow, that is the difference between the Israeli army
and Hamas: if the Israeli chief of staff were to boast that there were
no casualties among his fighters but that Israeli civilians had been
killed, he and his staff would have been relieved of their commands,
tried and imprisoned. However, we Palestinians boast that our civilians
were killed and that Hamas's terrorists remained alive, hiding in their
underground bunkers and tunnels, and accusing Israel of moral turpitude.
Hamas's irresponsibility in abandoning the Palestinians to a slow,
painful death is an unforgivable crime and a violation of Islam.

In addition, the conduct of Mahmoud Abbas, as a leader who claims to
want peace, is suspect. While the Palestinian Authority leadership
repeats violent Islamist slogans and prepares to incite a third intifada
in the West Bank, it dares to propose bringing Israel to the
International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of war crimes.
Mahmoud Abbas should remember that he heads the national consensus
government with Hamas, that Hamas shares the government with him, and
that he himself is liable to be tried in The Hague for the war crimes
Hamas committed against the Israelis.

Furthermore, the way the PLO closed ranks with Hamas during Operation
Protective Edge was also a sign of cowardice. The PLO seemed to fear a
massive uprising in the West Bank as well as attempting to open its
pockets to receive the funds that will eventually be donated for the
rebuilding of the Gaza Strip. Forming the national consensus government
was an act of stupidity, because the world, both Western and Arab, knows
Hamas is no different from the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic State
and the Al-Nusra Front. For that reason, the image of the PLO and of the
Palestinian cause will suffer from the Hamas-Fatah partnership. Hamas
will exploit it to try to take over the funds for rebuilding the Gaza
Strip, but it well never accept the authority of the senior PLO figures
whose comrades were thrown off the roofs of Gaza when Hamas took it over
in 2007.

The conduct of the Palestinian delegation to the ceasefire talks in
Cairo is also inexplicable. While the PLO is committed to the peace
agreements and to the establishment of a demilitarized Palestine state,
the Palestinian delegation in Cairo objects to a demilitarized Gaza,
which contradicts its commitment to peace, as well as abrogating an
agreement to demilitarization already signed in 2005: The Oslo II Interim Agreement,
Article XIV, which commits the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank
and the Gaza Strip not to manufacture or import weapons. So why is this
Agreement even being renegotiated, and why was it not implemented in the
first place? And as it was not, what is the point of Israel even trying
to reach agreements with people who do not honor them?

That Hamas continued shelling Israel despite the fact that Israel's
Iron Dome protects its cities and turns the rockets into scrap iron is
stupid: it merely led Israel to continue bombing the Gaza Strip.

The greatest recent example of Hamas hypocrisy was the recorded
message from Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades commander Muhammad Deif, who,
hiding in his bunker, proclaimed that, "The heroes of Hamas love death
the way the Jews love life." The Holy Qur'an specifically states (Surah
al-Baqarah, Verse 157) that suicide is forbidden, yet in direct
violation of the Qur'an, Deif caused the deaths of hundreds of Gazans,
while he and his ilk, who love life just the way the Jews do, hide and
refuse to hurry to paradise. In fact, when a death-loving operative is
killed, Hamas rages against the Jews and wants revenge.

Even as the mass catastrophe enveloped the Gaza Strip, Hamas boasted
of its victory, demanding the Egyptians (against whom they act not only
in the Sinai Peninsula but within Egypt itself) and the Israelis (whose
cities they attacked with rockets) reward them for their violence. The
prize they demand is the 24/7 opening of all the crossings, the Rafah
crossing with Egypt and the crossings into Israel, a safe passage
between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, a sea port, an airport, and
the release of the terrorist operatives imprisoned in Israel. Hamas has
forgotten that instead of constructing terrorist tunnels and buying
weapons, it could have used the money it got from UNRWA, Qatar, the EU
and its various "charities" around the world to construct a tourist
center to rival Singapore.

There is reason for optimism. Egypt, in the depths of an economic
crisis, can take a commission from the money that will flow into the
Gaza Strip and subject the building materials that will enter the Gaza
Strip through the Rafah crossing to customs duties. Both the
Palestinians and the Egyptians will be able to benefit by returning Gaza
to the status quo ante, before the war in 1967. The Palestinian people,
who of course love life as much as the Jews do, will awake, arise, and
expel Hamas from the Gaza Strip and start a new chapter in their lives.

You do not have to love the Jews or be a military strategist to know
that the Hamas demands for an airport, seaport and a passage to the West
Bank simply camouflage its plans to get money from Qatar and weapons
from Iran for both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. As only 15% of
Qatar's population is made up of Qatari nationals -- making Qatar a
country without a people -- and the Palestinians are a people without a
country, Qatar should be turned into the national home for the
Palestinians, "Palestine," just as Israel is the national home for the
Jews. In any event, Qatar supports us financially and ideologically, and
in that way it will be able to contribute to the rehabilitation of our
troubled people and turn us into a beloved nation, accepted by the
international family through a more just distribution of Arab resources.

In the wake of the tragedy caused by Hamas, the world must identify
the danger lurking for all of us if it is allowed to continue its
activities. The danger is not to the Jews alone, but to the Palestinians
and the entire world. The Europeans, convinced that the shows of
support in their own Islamic communities are meant to show solidarity
with the Palestinians and Hamas, will discover, to their sorrow, that
those same demonstrators will turn against them in the future and are
now only testing their strength.

The West must disband UNRWA, whose corrupt employees have for years
been stealing the funds meant for the Palestinians, and have been
employing Hamas terrorists and sheltering them in UNRWA facilities. The
time has come for the UN to devote resources to the millions of genuine
refugees around in the Arab world and in Africa, who are not in conflict
with the Jews.

The descendants of the original 1948 Palestinian refugees should be
granted citizenship in the Arab countries in which they have already
settled, and the apartheid policies employed against them by those countries should be repealed.

Hamas leaders should be tried for war crimes in the International
Criminal Court. Israel should be helped to disarm Hamas's
military-terrorist wing and Hamas's leaders should be imprisoned. Hamas
is an integral part of the radical Islamic problem in the Middle East --
and increasingly in Europe -- and the Palestinian issue is marginal at
best, merely an excuse for Islamists to kill the innocent. The West
should put Hamas on an equal footing with the ISIS. After that we can
establish a Palestinian state neighboring Israel, as is the right of our
long-suffering people.

[1]
The demolition or burning of Masjid al-Dirar is mentioned in the Qura'n
verses 9:107 and 9:110. Masjid al-Dirar was a Medinian mosque that was
erected close to the Quba' mosque and which Muhammad (SAAS) initially
approved of but subsequently had destroyed. Muhammad prepared himself to
go to the mosque, before he was prevented by a revelation about the
hypocrisy and ill design of its builders. Muhammad and his companions
believed they were hypocrites, thus he ordered his men to burn it down.Bassam Tawil is a scholar based in the Middle East.Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4628/hamas-war-crimes-and-crimes-against-islam Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

by David HarrisWhat's heading our way, in this terrorist-bloodied world? We depend on international media to help us find out.

So it's time to look at some dirty secrets, foreign correspondent edition.

Trench coats and panamas have given way to sat phones and moral
ambiguity. An ideal starting point in understanding this media ambiguity
– and its occasional, sinister undertones and implications for us – is
the Israel-Hamas war.

The penny should have dropped well before today's Gaza crisis. No later than April 11, 2003, in fact.

That day, CNN admitted in the New York Times that it hid and
manipulated reality, though the wording was more delicately
self-regarding. Prior to the 2003 defeat of Saddam Hussein, CNN couldn't
reveal fully the monstrous excesses and threatening nature of his Iraq,
because, said chief news executive Eason Jordan, the network's Iraqi
staff risked retaliation.

Problem: Jordan didn't explain why, having been prevented from
reporting honestly there, CNN nonetheless insisted on keeping its
financially rewarding Baghdad post operating before and during the 2003
war. Some critics concluded that an appetite for big, wartime
money-making ratings outstripped CNN's taste for truth, with some
ambitious journalists playing along.

Have media done similar things in Gaza?

International media boasts its courage and iconoclasm. But while
saturating us with stories about Gazans' suffering, many journo outfits
come up strangely short. Yes, we need to know about Palestinian
casualties – even if Gaza's people freely elected a Hamas government on a
platform of eradicating Jews and Christians.

But brief mention of Hamas' human shields is about as far as media
venture into the designated terror organization's inhuman nature and
inhumane operations. Surprising, given that ISIS is a four-letter word
for Hamas.

The result: Virtually no press photos emerge of ferocious Hamas,
Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other "fighters." And no MSM interest in
the UN's Palestine refugee agency's pattern of Hamas-friendly hiring at
its facilities, including of teachers in schools packed with munitions.
Are Hamas chiefs hiding in hospitals and mosques? Extrajudicial killings
of Israeli "collaborators"? Gazan kids killed by a short-falling Hamas
rocket? Who cares? Cut to pictures of Israeli tanks.

Big Hamas questions have hardly been touched, especially in the early
weeks of the struggle. Why? Some media inadvertently exposed the
secret.

The Wall Street Journal's Nick Casey tweeted a photo of a Hamas
mouthpiece at Gaza's main hospital, and asked, with "the shelling, how
patients at Shifa hospital feel as Hamas uses it as a safe place to see
media." Then, with that courage and iconoclasm we hear about, the tweet
was yanked.

You want iconoclasm? Take Libération, the French hard-left daily
founded by that rolling barrage of mistresses and metaphysics, Jean-Paul
Sartre.

Either way, correspondent Uriel Heilman put it best. Covering the
Israel-Hamas fighting, Heilman wrote that unreported Hamas censorship
and press self-censorship mean the public is "only getting half the
story."

"And where I come from," he added, "a half-truth is considered a lie."

Something to remember when relying on media for intelligence about our future in a dangerous world.

David B. Harris is lawyer with 30 years' experience in intelligence affairs, director of the International Intelligence Program,
INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc.Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/4555/would-i-lie-to-you Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

by William Kilpatrick[To order William Kilpatrick’s new book, Insecurity, click here.]It’s hard to keep up with the news about Islam. One week, the focus is on Boko Haram, then it shifts to Hamas, and then to ISIS.Every once in a while, it helps to step back and take a look at the big picture—that is, the big picture in regard to the Islamic resurgence. Not that there aren’t other big threats on the horizon—such as Russia, China, and North Korea—but let’s confine ourselves here to the Islamic threat.That threat comes in two forms: armed jihad and stealth jihad. Since armed jihad is more conspicuous, it gets most of our attention. It’s difficult not to notice the activities of Boko Haram in Nigeria or ISIS in Iraq, or the major terror attacks that occur once every year or so—the bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the London bus and subway attack, the bombing of commuter trains in Madrid and Mumbai, and the mall massacre in Nairobi. In the back of our minds, we also know that Pakistan has nuclear weapons and that Iran will soon acquire them (although some American bishops assure us that Iran has no such intention).The balance of military power still favors the West—although it’s no longer clear whether Turkey, which has the second largest military in NATO, will come down on the side of the West or on the side of the Islamists. But military power can be offset by asymmetrical warfare—in other words, the type of warfare that terrorists favor. A small team of terrorists can incinerate the World Trade Center or paralyze Madrid or Mumbai, and there’s not much that F-16s or nuclear submarines can do about it.

Which is where that other form of jihad comes in. Stealth jihad, which, as the name implies, is the less noticeable type, can create a base for armed jihadists to ply their trade. Stealth jihad, in essence, is an attempt to turn a culture in an Islamic direction by infiltrating and influencing key institutions such as schools, courts, churches, media, government, and the entertainment industry. The “Trojan Horse” plot for taking over 10 schools in Birmingham, England is one example of stealth jihad; the national security establishment’s purging of training materials that cast a critical eye on Islam is another.But, in order to do the long march through the institutions, you have to have enough bodies to do the marching. Thus, many critics look upon Muslim immigration into non-Muslim societies as a form of stealth jihad. For example, in their bookModern-Day Trojan Horse: The Islamic Doctrine of Immigration, Sam Solomon and Elias Al-Maqdisi describe Muslim immigration as, well, a “modern-day Trojan Horse.” They’re not saying that every single Muslim immigrant wants to subvert your local school, but rather that mass migration and Islamic conquest have been linked ever since Muhammad and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina and commenced the takeover of Arabia.Many places in Europe have changed almost beyond recognition due to the combination of mass immigration and high Muslim birth rates. And the political makeup of Europe is also changing. Since Muslims in Europe and the UK tend to vote as a bloc, politicians have begun catering to them, thus magnifying their influence. It’s widely thought, for instance, that the victory margin for French President Francois Hollande—a strong proponent of Muslim immigration—was provided by Muslim voters.It used to be that anyone who talked about the Islamization of Europe was dismissed as an “alarmist.” But plenty of Europeans are talking about it now– including European Muslims who proudly march with signs proclaiming their intention to dominate Europe. Social-network researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have concluded that “when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakeable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.” France is already over 10 percent Muslim, and the majority of Frenchmen, like most Europeans, don’t seem to have any strong convictions about anything outside of an unshakeable belief in long vacations and early retirement.In significant ways, stealth jihad paves the way for armed jihad. In its early stages, it can create localized environments where homegrown jihadists can grow and flourish. In its later stages? The ultimate aim of stealth jihad is to put the reins of power in the hands of Muslims. What if, as seems increasingly likely, France and England concede more and more political power to Islamists? Both countries are nuclear powers with advanced delivery systems. Given the rapid rate at which the old order of things is being turned upside down, it is not inconceivable that these weapons could someday fall into the hands of Islamic radicals.As for the Muslim nations—those with nukes and those without—they too are rapidly changing. The reason that the West was so unprepared for the reappearance of traditional Islam as a world force is that, up until relatively recent times, most of the major Muslim nations were under the control of secular-minded strongmen who made a point of suppressing the full expression of Islam. The 1979 Iranian Revolution changed all that, and most of the Westernized secular strongmen were replaced over time by leaders who felt they need answer only to Allah. For example, Turkey, which for years was touted by Westerners as a model moderate Muslim society, is now run by a rabidly anti-Semitic, Muslim Brotherhood true believer who seems intent on making Turkey the world’s foremost Islamic power—as it was as recently as one hundred short years ago.Where does this leave the United States? Most Americans, I would venture to guess, are of the opinion that it can’t happen here. While many are now willing to admit that jihadists can once again damage America through terrorist attacks, few can imagine the possibility of an Islamicized America.

Yet Islamization is occurring in Europe, and many of the same conditions that make it possible there make it possible here, as well. Stealth jihad is already a fact in America. Its influence can be seen in textbooks and on college campuses, in the media, and even in the movies. Moreover, there are numerous American activist groups—offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood—which are dedicated to stealth jihad. Although disguised as civil rights groups, these organizations would like nothing better than to see sharia become the law of the land. And their own litigators are as adept at lawfare as ISIS is at warfare.Surprisingly, they meet with little resistance. That lack of pushback can be explained by considering one other factor in the overall mix—political correctness. Political correctness greases the skids for stealth jihad. It’s the “open sesame” password that allows the stealth jihadists in America to go just about anywhere they please. Right now, most Americans are more afraid of violating the rules of PC than they are of another 9/11 occurrence. They’re afraid, in other words, of being thought bigoted, racist, or—God forbid—Islamophobic. There’s little resistance to stealth jihad in America, because the few that do resist are reliably cast by the PC enforcers as anti-Muslim haters. Most people don’t want that to happen to them. So they don’t make a fuss when Muslims make demands. They go along to get along. As just one tiny example among hundreds of others, consider the recent story about a bistro in Winooski, Vermont, that removed a window sign advertising their delicious bacon because a Muslim woman claimed it was offensive.That’s a fairly minor concession, but your nation’s really in trouble when Muslims complain about “insensitive” training materials used by the Department of Defense and the FBI, and the Department of Justice immediately complies by ordering a purge of all training manuals in all security agencies that contain even a hint of a link between terrorism and Islam. On the other hand, when five Congressmen complained that they had good evidence of Muslim Brotherhood penetration of the State Department and other government agencies, they were treated to a resounding rebuke by fellow legislators for having offended the Muslim community. Who needs ISIS when ISNA (the Islamic Society of North America) is allowed to vet military training manuals, or when Congress members who complain about such things risk being sent off to sensitivity training camp?But wait a minute, you may be tempted to say, Europe’s slow-motion surrender can’t happen here because Europe’s birth rate imbalance and Muslim immigration problem don’t exist here. That’s true enough, but there is one other factor to consider—conversions. Right now, conversions to Islam by U.S. citizens remain on the low side. But remember that Muhammad also had a conversion problem. For the first twelve years of his ministry, he never had more than 100 followers. Then he moved to Medina, started raiding and looting, and the numbers kicked in. There seems to be a tipping point in the affairs of men which can result in a dramatic acceleration of conversions. Once a movement starts looking like the coming thing, more people will contemplate jumping on board.We may be at one of those tipping points now. For the middle-aged and arthritic, it’s difficult to understand why thousands of recruits from all over the Western world are signing up with ISIS. But ISIS and similar groups do have a certain “cool” appeal to those of fighting age. Some Western analysts mistakenly believe that contact with Western pop culture will have a de-radicalizing effect on potential jihadists. But that’s not necessarily the case. Recall that Muhammad Atta and his crew partied it up at bars and strip clubs in the weeks before 9/11. Or consider that a British rapper is the main suspect in the Islamic State’s beheading of American journalist James Foley. It seems that the Islamic encounter with pop culture may turn out to be a case of “they came, they saw, they co-opted.” That’s because much of pop culture is already halfway there.To youngsters brought up on gruesome video games and gangsta rap, YouTube videos of severed heads aren’t appalling, they’re “awesome.” Graduates of relativist pop culture don’t think in terms of right and wrong, they think in terms of cool and uncool. ISIS types are also very savvy exploiters of social media. “Like #ISIS in #Iraq” has become a popular hashtag. And the Daily Mail reports that “ISIS militants and their supporters are using social media to encourage protestors in Ferguson [Missouri] to embrace radical Islam and fight against the U.S. government.” Why should black Americans embrace Islam? Well, because “Racism and discrimination are rampant” in America and “In Islam there is no racism.” If the militants ever decide to hang up their bomb belts, they can always find work on Madison Avenue.There is another disturbing possibility that needs to be taken into account when assessing the Islamic threat to America. In a recent column, former U.S. representative and retired lieutenant colonel Allen West stated that Barack Obama “is an Islamist in his foreign policy perspectives and supports their cause.” West isn’t saying that Obama was born in Mombasa or that he wears a secret Muslim decoder ring, but that his policies suggest a deep sympathy with Islamist causes. West provides a list of particulars, including this eye-catching item: “The Obama administration has lifted longtime restrictions on Libyans attending flight schools in the United States and training here in nuclear science.” To which the obvious reply is “What could possibly go wrong?”Here are two other items on West’s list:

Returning sanction money, to the tune of billions of dollars, back to the theocratic regime led by Iran’s ayatollahs and allowing them to march on towards nuclear capability

Providing weapons of support to the Muslim Brotherhood-led Egyptian government—F-16s and M1A1 Abrams tanks—but not to the Egyptian government after the Islamist group has been removed.

The second item also troubled Michele Bachmann and four other House members when they asked for an investigation two years ago into possible Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the government. They expressed concern that the Department of State had “taken actions recently that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests.”If not many Americans have taken notice of the administration’s Muslim Brotherhood bias, the Egyptians have. When then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Alexandria in July of 2012, her motorcade was pelted by tomato-throwing protestors who charged that Washington had helped the Muslim Brotherhood come to power. A year later, after the overthrow of the Brotherhood, demonstrators at a huge rally in Cairo roundly criticized Obama and U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson. A typical poster read: “Obama, stop supporting the Muslim Brotherhood fascist regime.” In December 2012, an Egyptian magazine, Rose El-Youssef, claimed that six American Islamic activists working within the Obama administration were Muslim Brotherhood operatives. And this past week, it was revealed that the Egyptians had teamed up with the United Arab Emirates to bomb Islamist forces in Libya, but purposely neglected to tell the Obama administration of their plans. It doesn’t take a mind-reader to guess why. They obviously feared that the Americans might leak the operation to the enemy. The point is that Obama’s consistent pro-Muslim Brotherhood policies reveals a lot more about his sympathies than his occasional don’t-slander-the-Prophet type remarks.

Whether or not Obama is a secret Islamist (as claimed by another Egyptian newspaper) is almost beside the point. Judged by his policies, he might as well be. And long before its romance with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the current administration had shown a distinct favoritism toward Muslim Brotherhood offshoot organizations such as ISNA and CAIR. So also did the Bush administration. As I wrote two years ago:In Europe, the rise of Islam has been a slow, incremental process—the result of decades of immigration combined with high birthrates for Muslims and low birthrates for indigenous Europeans. In America, Muslim strategists may have found a way to shortcut the long process.Thus far, stealth jihad has met with relatively little resistance in America. That’s not to say that we should ignore armed jihad. Pakistan has nuclear weapons, Iran is acquiring them, and Turkey has the eighth largest army in the world. ISIS, Hezbollah, and Hamas have well-equipped fighting forces and all are capable of carrying out terrorist operations far from their home bases. And the United States? The U.S. plans to shrink its Army to pre-World War II levels. One other factor to be considered when assessing the big picture is that the U.S. is drastically reducing the size and strength of its military. Just at the point when the rest of the world is arming to the teeth, the American solons think it’s safe to bid a farewell to arms.When you put together all the pieces of the big picture puzzle, it begins to look like a decidedly grim picture.William Kilpatrick is the author of Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West (Ignatius Press) and Insecurity (Post Hill Press).Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/william-kilpatrick/the-big-picture-isis-in-context/ Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The world has been
shocked by the Islamic State's atrocities, watching with horror as
religious minorities in Iraq are forced to choose between Islam and
death. Its cruel and inhumane tactics also involve starvation and mass
killing of civilians who refuse to fall in line with its ideology.

The organization has
posted gruesome footage showing the beheading of American journalists,
and if you believe their threats, they have more in the pipeline. The
Islamic State is a Salafist-jihadist organization that adheres to a very
strict interpretation of Islamic scriptures. It believes the Quran and
the Hadith (the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad that have been passed
down from one generation to the next) should be understood in their most
literal sense and as narrowly as possible, just like the followers of
Muhammad would have acted in the seventh century.

The brutality of this
organization has had an unsettling effect on the West. For students of
Islamic history, though, the latest developments are anything but
shocking.

Muhammad's relations
with the Jews of Medina, a town in the Arabian peninsula, are a case in
point. In 622, after the residents of Mecca rejected Muhammad's
teachings and tried to assassinate him, he fled to nearby Medina. At the
time, the city was composed of five tribes, three of which were Jewish.
At first, Muhammad exercised tolerance toward the Jews and even
incorporated many Jewish rituals into Islam, hoping this would have them
convert. He would ultimately become the dominant figure in the city,
but he would not be able to win over the Jews. Finally, some two years
after arriving in the city, he presented the Jews with a choice: either
embrace Islam or flee.

Two Jewish tribes --
Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Nadir -- refused to convert and were expelled from
the city. Their property was seized and distributed among the Muslims.
Another Jewish tribe, Banu Qurayza, fared much worse because it was
accused of collaborating with Muhammad's enemies. The men were sentenced
to death, with the women and children sold as slaves. Their property
became plunder and spoil for the Muslims.

Ibn Hisham, whose
writings on the life of Muhammad are considered authoritative, described
the executions as follows: "And then the messenger of Allah (Muhammad)
separated them and banned them from the city, at the home of Bint
al-Harith, a woman from the tribe of al-Najar. Then the messenger of
Allah left for the Medina market and dug trenches there. He then brought
the Jews, one group after another, and beheaded them in the trenches."

This brief story was
designed to shed light on the origins of this brutal practice. This
killing method is used to terrorize others, but it also serves as a
clear warning to others lest they misbehave.

But we must look at the
bigger picture. The Islamic State took advantage of the demise of Arab
regimes. It was also helped by the false Western narrative -- in fact, a
flawed paradigm -- that the Arab Spring would herald the much-desired
democratic transformation.

The international
community and Israel must come to grips with the fact that we are
dealing with terrorists who are unwilling to compromise on their
ideology.

We are duty-bound to devise a strategy to counter them in an effective way.

The turmoil of the past
four years has shaped a new geostrategic reality in the Middle East and
beyond. The disintegration of the regional order and the disconcerting
rise in the power of nonstate actors in the area, in the shape of
radical terrorist groups that seek to form a new world order based on
Islamic law, are a wake-up call -- perhaps even the last one -- for the
free world.

Unless the free world
finds a way to consolidate its efforts, and finds the strength and
courage to act; unless the free world is able to sideline the need to be
politically correct in favor of truly differentiating between right and
wrong and between what is humane and what is barbaric; and unless the
free world would be willing to temporarily jeopardize financial
prosperity based on blood money and corruption in favor of real action
-- the forces of evil might trump the forces of good.

Four major Islamic
camps have formed: political Islam, led by the Muslim Brotherhood;
radical Sunni Islam, represented by terrorist groups such as al-Qaida,
the Islamic State group, the Nusra Front, etc.; Shia Islam, led by Iran,
Syria, and Hezbollah; and moderate-national Islam, represented by Egypt
and the Arab monarchies, excluding Qatar.

The bitter rivalries
between these four camps may make for strange, albeit momentary,
bedfellows -- Saudi Arabia and Iran versus the Islamic State group, for
example -- but these brief alliances would not be enough to blur the
lines between the camps, as the turmoil sweeping through the Arab world
has only made the differences between them starker.

Three camps pose a
clear threat to the free world and its interests in the Middle East, and
only the moderate-national Islam camp can be considered a reliable
ally. But the West, and especially the United States, has at time
favored political Islam, which it perceived as a new hope, thus turning
its back on moderate Islam.

U.S. policies have led
the moderate camp, led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- which share
strategic interests with Israel as well -- to despair, prompting Cairo
and Riyadh to increase their cooperation, and making them the only force
in the Arab world today that could put up an "iron wall" and stop
political and radical Islam from running rampant.

Egyptian President
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has proven as much after he forced Hamas to agree
to a cease-fire with Israel during Operation Protective Edge, thus
cementing his position as the most influential Arab leader in the
region.

Qatar, for its part,
has been trying to stop this "iron wall" from coming up. This tiny,
affluent emirate, which enjoys the U.S.'s support, has made its survival
strategies into what drives some of the most volatile conflicts in the
Middle East, by directly and indirectly backing jihadist groups, such as
Hamas in the Gaza Strip, al-Qaida and Iraq and Syria, and others.

Qatar's international
prestige and influence have skyrocketed over the past few years due to
several key factors, including its immense wealth, the success of its
flagship television station Al Jazeera, the significant American
military presence on its soil alongside substantial arms deals with the
U.S., and its successful bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

This tiny emirate's
success has made it arrogant, irresponsible and defiant of anyone it
perceives as its regional rival. Qatar is the proverbial golem that has
become a monster. And now it has fostered other golems, which have
evolved from fringe actors in the regional theater into monstrous and
destabilizing elements, which have also exported terrorism to the West.

Radical Islam's
murderous rampage is no longer confined to the Middle East -- it has
arrived at the gates of the free world and it mandates that the latter
comes to its senses, even if it means severing ties with Qatar.

The West has ample
tools at its disposal, including dealing Doha's international prestige a
crippling blow by revoking the license it has been given to host the
World Cup games. The West can denounce Qatar and even impose sanctions
on the emirate over its human rights violations. Beyond that, the free
world also has an array of clandestine measures it could apply to rattle
Qatar's leadership into rethinking its positions on regional issues.

Dr. Kobi Michael is a senior
lecturer at Ariel University and a senior research fellow at the
Institute for National Security Studies.

During the past ten years and two days, the ostrich cabinets did nothing. Every warning was ignored. They lied to the people.Do not prevent jihadists from leaving our country. Let them leave. I
am prepared to go to Schiphol [airport] to wave them goodbye. But let
them never come back.Madam Speaker, war has been declared against us.

Madam Speaker, actually I was expecting flowers from you. I am
celebrating an anniversary these days. Exactly ten years and two days
ago, I left a party whose name I cannot immediately remember. During
these ten years and two days. I have been much criticized. Most
importantly for always saying the same thing.

My critics are right. Indeed, my message had been the same during all
these years. And today, I will repeat the same message about Islam
again. For the umpteenth time. As I have been doing for ten years and
two days.

I have been vilified for my film Fitna. And not just vilified, but
even prosecuted. Madam Speaker, while not so many years ago, everyone
refused to broadcast my film Fitna, we can today watch Fitna 2, 3, 4 and
5 daily on our television screens. It is not a clash of civilizations
that is going on, but a clash between barbarism and civilization.

The Netherlands has become the victim of Islam because the political
elite looked away. Here, in these room, they are all present, here and
also in the Cabinet, all these people who looked away. Every warning was
ignored.

As a result, also in our country today, Christians are being told:
"We want to murder you all." Jews receive death threats. Swastika flags
at demonstrations, stones go through windows, Molotov cocktails, Hitler
salutes are being made, macabre black ISIS flags wave in the wind, we
hear cries, such as "F-ck the Talmud," on the central square in
Amsterdam.

Indeed, Madam Speaker, this summer, Islam came to us.

In all naivety, Deputy Prime Minister Asscher states that there is an
"urgent demand" from Muslims to "crack down" on this phenomenon. Last
Friday, in its letter to Parliament, the Cabinet wrote that jihadists
are hardly significant. They are called a "sect", and a "small" group.

This is what those who look away wish, these deniers of the painful
truth for ten years and two days, the ostrich brigade Rutte 2.

But the reality is different. According to a study, 73% of all
Moroccans and Turks in the Netherlands are of the opinion that those who
go to Syria to fight in the jihad are "heroes." People whom they
admire.

And this is not a new phenomenon. Thirteen years ago, 3,000 people
died in the attacks of 9/11. We remember the images of burning people
jumping from the twin towers. Then, also, three-quarters of the Muslims
in the Netherlands condoned this atrocity. That is not a few Muslims,
but hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the Netherlands condoning
terrorism and saying jihadists are heroes. I do not make this up. It has
been investigated. It is a ticking time bomb.

Madam Speaker, is it a coincidence that for centuries Muslims were
involved in all these atrocities? No, it is not a coincidence. They
simply act according to their ideology. According to Islam, Allah
dictated the truth to Muhammad, "the perfect man." Hence, whoever denies
the Koran, denies Allah. And Allah leaves no ambiguity about what he
wants. Here are a few quotes from the Quran:

Surah 8 verse 60: "Prepare to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah."Surah 47 verse 4: "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers, smite at their necks". We see it every day in the news.

Another quote from Allah is Surah 4 verse 89: "So take not friends
from the ranks of the unbelievers, seize them and kill them wherever ye
find them."

Madam Speaker, the Koran on the table before you is a handbook for
terrorists. Blood drips from its pages. It calls for perpetual war
against non-believers. That Koran before you is the hunting permit for
millions of Muslims. A license to kill. That book is the Constitution of
the Islamic State. What ISIS does is what Allah commands.

This bloodthirsty ideology was able to nestle in the Netherlands
because our elites looked away. Neighborhoods such as Schilderswijk,
Transvaal, Crooswijk, Slotervaart, Kanaleneiland, Huizen, you name it.
There, the caliphate is under construction; there, the Islamic State is
in preparation.

During the past ten years and two days , the ostrich Cabinets did
nothing. It has nothing to do with Islam, they lied to the people.
Imagine them having to tell the truth.

But the people have noticed. Two thirds of all Dutch say that the
Islamic culture does not belong in the Netherlands. Including the
majority of the electorate of the Labour Party, the majority of the
voters of the VVD, the majority of the voters of the CDA, and all the
voters of the PVV.

The voters demand that, after ten years and two days of slumber,
measures are finally taken. The voters demand that something effective
happen. No semi-soft palliatives. Allow me to make a few suggestions to
the away-with-us mafia. Here are a few things which should happen
starting today:

Recognize that Islam is the problem. Start the de-Islamization of the Netherlands. Less Islam.

Close every Salafist mosque which receives even a penny from the Gulf
countries. Deprive all jihadists of their passports, even if they only
have a Dutch passport. Let them take an ISIS passport.

Do not prevent jihadists from leaving our country. Let them leave,
with as many friends as possible. If it helps, I am even prepared to go
to Schiphol [airport] to wave them goodbye. But let them never come
back. That is the condition. Good riddance.

And, as far as I am concerned, anyone who expresses support for
terror as a means to overthrow our constitutional democracy has to leave
the country at once. If you are waving an ISIS flag you are waving an
exit ticket. Leave! Get out of our country!

Madam Speaker, war has been declared against us. We have to strike back hard. Away with these people! Enough is enough!

Click for a video of this speech.Geert WildersSource: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4674/geert-wilders-speech Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Over the weekend, Rand Paul said something entirely out of character for him, and as Aaron Blake of the Washington Post commented, “almost nobody noticed.”

A funny thing happened over the weekend: While President Obama took heat for saying he didn't have a strategy to deal with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS and isil) in Syria, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) delivered a pretty remarkable statement."If
I were president, I would call a joint session of Congress," Paul told
the AP. "I would lay out the reasoning of why ISIS is a threat to our
national security and seek congressional authorization to destroy ISIS
militarily."The quote didn't really make the rounds and was buried deep in the AP story, but it's a pretty telling little nugget.Why?
Because, to date, it's one of the most hawkish things that any
potential 2016 presidential contender has said about the Islamic State.
And Paul is supposed to be the non-interventionist in the bunch.

Some who did notice were Kemberlee Kaye of Legal Insurrection and Eliana Johnson of NRO.
The latter spoke to Paul foreign affairs advisor Richard Burt, who
positioned the Senator’s sudden about-face (“Just days earlier, Paul
attacked former secretary of state Hillary Clinton as a ‘war hawk.’”) as
a pragmatic response to new information:

Paul,
Burt says, “understands that the United States is a global power and
that there are occasions where the United States has to use military
force.”“I
think this is all based on an approach to foreign policy that thinks in
terms of American interests,” he says. “The thing that makes ISIS a
particularly serious challenge is that we do have interests” in the
Middle East, Burt says — in a thriving Kurdish minority and a stable,
successful Iraqi government that integrates the country’s Sunni
minority.Burt
tacitly suggests that what differentiates Paul from the
neoconservatives who shaped policy at the top echelons of the Bush is
his belief that the use of force should be “selective” and that leaders
should think through the consequences of using force and have a strategy
for bringing it to an end.

This
is not a very satisfying explanation for a dramatic and abrupt change
in position. Richard Epsetin of the Hoover Institution, himself a
libertarian-leaning scholar, has laid out a very thoughtful critique of
the underlying premises of what he terms Rand Paul’s “fatal pacifism.”

Senator
Paul has been against the use of military force for a long time. Over
the summer, he wrote an article entitled “America Shouldn’t Choose Sides
in Iraq’s Civil War,” for the pages of
the Wall Street Journal arguing that ISIS did not threaten vital
American interests. Just this past week, he doubled down on this
position, again in the Journal, arguing that the past interventions of the United States in the Middle East have abetted the rise of ISIS. (snip)It
is instructive to ask why it is that committed libertarians like Paul
make such disastrous judgments on these life and death issues. In part
it is because libertarians often have the illusion of certainty in
political affairs that is congenial to the logical libertarian mind.
This mindset has led to their fundamental misapprehension of the
justified use of force in international affairs. The applicable
principles did not evolve in a vacuum, but are derived from parallel
rules surrounding self-defense for ordinary people living in a state of
nature. Libertarian theory has always permitted the use and threat of
force, including deadly force if need be, to defend one’s self, one’s
property, and one’s friends. To be sure, no one is obligated to engage
in humanitarian rescue of third persons, so that the decision to
intervene is one that is necessarily governed by a mixture of moral and
prudential principles. In addition, the justified use of force also
raises hard questions of timing. In principle, even deadly force can be
used in anticipation of an attack by others, lest any delayed response
prove fatal. In all cases, it is necessary to balance the risks of
moving too early or too late.These
insights help shape the serious libertarian debates over the use of
force. Correctly stated, a theory of limited government means only that
state power should be directed exclusively to a few legitimate ends. The
wise state husbands its resources to guard against aggression, not to
divert its energies by imposing minimum wage laws or agricultural price
supports on productive market activities. Quite simply, there are no
proper means to pursue these illegitimate ends. (snip)Senator Paul errs too much on the side of caution. He would clamp down, for example, on the data collection activities of
the National Security Agency, which allow for the better deployment of
scarce American military resources, even though NSA protocols tightly
restrict the use of the collected information. It is wrong to either
shut down or sharply restrict an intelligence service that has proved
largely free of systematic abuse. The breakdown of world order makes it
imperative to deploy our technological advantages to the full. Sensible
oversight offers a far better solution.The
same is true in spades about the use of force in Iraq and Syria, where
matters have deteriorated sharply since Paul’s misguided plea for
non-intervention in June. It was foolish for him to insist (and for
President Obama to agree) that the United States should not intervene to
help Iraqis because the Iraqis have proved dangerously ill-equipped to
help themselves. Lame excuses don’t wash in the face of the heinous
aggression that the Islamic State has committed against the Yazidis and
everyone else in its path.

Professor
Epstein’s analysis does demonstrate there is room for Sen. Paul to
justify his change and still be true to Libertarian principles, and be
guilty of, at most, bad timing.

I
confess to being agnostic, at the moment, on Rand Paul. While I am
leaning increasingly in libertarian direction myself, I am worried by
what appears to me to be an underweighting of nature of the security
threats we face, even as I, too, chafe at the surveillance state that
has been created as a supposed remedy to the terror threat (as compared
to, say, identifying without apology the nature of the Islamic threat we
face and a focus on Islam as a risk factor in assessing security
concerns. Calling violent jihad a “perversion of a Great Religion”
ignores a lot of history of Islamic conquest and amounts to wishful
thinking).

Senator
Paul has a way to go before he convinces me he has awoken to the severe
security threats we face from Islam, and from other aggressive powers,
such as Russia and China, for that matter. But I cannot write him off
completely, if only because he has demonstrated an appeal to
nontraditional GOP voters, such as students at UC Berkeley. The GOP
absolutely has to have a champion who can enlarge the tent, if only
because the electorate has been (and continues to be) deliberately
engineered in the direction of people dependent on government checks and
therefore willing voters for high taxes that they don’t pay in order to
fund their receipt of money earned by other people. We have perhaps one
or two more presidential election cycles and naturalization ceremonies
before we have a permanent majority of dependents, and we need to win
over the younger generation who have been so badly betrayed by the
president they overwhelmingly voted for.

The ball in now in Rand Paul’s court. I hope he will expand on his views of national security.